Birding Notes

Shortly after noon today – another hot day, temperatures in the 90s – two Great Crested Flycatchers came to the sunny part of the deck, right outside our kitchen window, and settled down for a sunbath.

Sitting side by side, both lowered their bellies to the wood floor, long cinnamon tail and wings with cinnamon feathers spread out wide, big gray heads turned slightly upward, dark eyes watchful. They sat very still like this for several minutes. Feathers all over their bodies seemed to be ruffled and spread out. At times their bills were open and they might have been panting, but at other times their bills were closed. The deck must have been very warm, if not hot, and the sun was directly overhead, but they looked as if it felt good.

Then something startled them and both flew away abruptly to a nearby tree. Later – maybe an hour or so – one of them was back, basking in the sun again.

Sunbathing appears to be a fairly common activity for many species of birds, and while a number of different reasons for it have been suggested, it seems likely that sunning helps keeps plumage healthy, especially by helping to discourage or get rid of parasites.

Early June has been a good time for seeing reptiles. One warm morning a long Black Rat Snake stretched from a grassy roadside in a shady area out onto the pavement, on its way across the road, but very slowly. Its back half looked lumpy and looped or kinked in several curves. At first I thought it had recently eaten – but later read that Black Rat Snakes may wrinkle themselves into kinks when startled. It was a very fine snake, at least four feet long, maybe more, black on top and white underneath, and I was afraid it would almost certainly be run over if it stayed in the road.

It was large enough so that I was afraid to pick it up, even with a long stick. Instead, I tried to coax it back into the grass with a large leafy branch that had fallen in a recent windstorm. Probably not a good idea. This only caused the snake to coil its upper body, raise its head, swell its jaws and flick out its tongue in a defensive posture. It swiveled its head to watch me as I moved around it, trying in vain to convince it to turn around and leave the road.

After a couple of minutes, I decided I was doing more harm than good, and walked away, feeling guilty but not knowing what else to do. I noticed at least three or four cars drive into the subdivision as I walked along the road by the field, and was really afraid I’d return to find a dead-on-the-road snake – but was pleasantly surprised when I headed home to find that it had completely disappeared. Maybe once I was gone and out of the way, it moved quickly into cover again somewhere, whether across the road or not. Good!

Only a couple of days later, a big beautiful Eastern King Snake, black with a chain-like pattern of yellow, slithered across the road several yards ahead of me as I walked. This one wasn’t wasting any time – it moved very quickly across the road, swift and as fluid as silk, through some grass and into some shrubs where it disappeared as if it had never been. It’s the first King Snake I’ve seen in many years – and perversely, I wished it had not been in such a hurry so that I could get a longer look.

Both Black Rat Snakes and Eastern King Snakes are non-poisonous and generally beneficial to have around, even though they will both eat birds and bird eggs. They eat rodents, including mice, rats and squirrels, and Eastern King Snakes are known especially for being resistant to the venom of pit vipers, so they eat copperheads, rattlesnakes and cottonmouths. Although Black Rat Snakes are still considered common and widespread, their habitat is shrinking. Eastern King Snakes are still common in some regions, but in others have almost disappeared, possibly in part because of loss of habitat.

That same afternoon, we found two Eastern Fence Lizards that appeared to be in a mating posture on a large rock at the corner of an area of shrubs on a corner of our house. One lizard was on top of the other and seemed to be gripping the back of the neck of the other in its jaws – but they did not seem actually to be mating. They were frozen in position, maybe because we were there. The one on top was a much paler color, mostly fawn brown, with darker brown markings, and bright turquoise blue showing on the sides of the belly. The one on the bottom seemed larger and darker, charcoal gray and patterned in different shades of gray and black. We watched from a couple of feet away for several minutes. But when we tried to get closer – suddenly, very suddenly – they both leapt up and scurried away, in a flash, out of sight among the bushes. I think they were very briefly airborne – that’s how I see them in my mind, suspended – then on the ground. But it happened so fast, I’m not sure. It could not have taken them more than two seconds to leap and run and be gone – maybe not that long. A blip.

June has begun with more than a week of long, sunny, very hot summery days, temperatures in the mid and upper 90s, with hazy blue skies and blurry, distant clouds, and no rain. The weather’s hot and dry and oppressive, but all things considered, so far it’s been kinder to us here than in many other parts of the country.

Cicadas have begun to sing. Grasshoppers crackle and fly. Queen Anne’s lace and dandelions bloom along the roadsides, and tall, tough but brilliant purple thistles bloom in the old field, attracting butterflies like a fresh, bright Black Swallowtail I watched one morning. A Green Anole patrols the rails of the deck, and a Blue-tailed Skink slithers in and out of crevices. A pair of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds come often to a feeder hanging from the back deck.

A Scarlet Tanager sings from dawn to dusk, and calls chick-brrrr, weaving its way through the woods behind our house. A Summer Tanager sings in a big Red Oak at the corner, a Red-eyed Vireo in the woods, an Acadian Flycatcher down by the creek, a young Blue Grosbeak smudged with blue and a jewel of an Indigo Bunting in the Old Field – and early one morning, though it was unusual, an Eastern Wood-Pewee came by to whistle its sweet, sensual pee-ah-wee, wheeee-ooo outside our bedroom windows for several minutes.

In the long summer twilight, fireflies flash low over the grass, thunder rumbles in the distance, and bats circle over open yards in fading orange light and air that’s warm and sultry, fragrant with the scent of gardenias.

Many songs still greet the first gray light of day and sunrise, but by mid morning birds have become much more quiet and dispersed. The songs of Red-eyed Vireo, Summer Tanager, Scarlet Tanager, Eastern Phoebe, Northern Cardinal, Carolina Wren and Chipping Sparrow, and the Breet calls of Great-crested Flycatcher most often begin the day around our own yard, and are heard throughout the day. A Northern Mockingbird sings from the top of a tall Leyland cypress; a Brown Thrasher from the top of a pecan tree. An American Robin joins in now and then. A family of Eastern Bluebirds – parents and three juveniles – hunts from low branches and visits the birdbath, the male an always-startling flash of blue. The birdbaths stay pretty busy, and the small moat filled with water in the center of the hummingbird feeder is a popular drinking spot for Titmice, Chickadees and Goldfinch.

Over the past few days, I’ve taken a very informal count of bird species in our neighborhood for the breeding season, and have found a total of 47 species. Although there are many beautiful birds and any day can hold a surprise, I can’t help feeling that the news is mostly not too good. The trend toward fewer neotropical species, and fewer numbers of those that are here, seems to be continuing. For the first time in eleven years in this neighborhood, I have not heard or seen a Yellow-billed Cuckoo. The absence of its dry, exotic call leaves the woods here feeling less like summer should.

Also missing for the first time this year are Yellow-throated Vireo and Northern Parula – two more very characteristic birds of our summer woods. There are fewer numbers of Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (very surprising), Summer Tanager, White-eyed Vireo, Wood Thrush and Acadian Flycatcher. In the old field just outside the subdivision, a more open habitat, numbers of Blue Grosbeak and Indigo Bunting have been declining over the years, and this summer, there’s only one Indigo Bunting singing, and only one first-summer Blue Grosbeak male. Meanwhile, numbers of Brown-headed Cowbird, Blue Jay and House Wren have increased, and we even have a few European Starlings.

On the other hand, Great-crested Flycatchers are flourishing; a Black-and-white Warbler sings in one section of the woods, along with a couple of Louisiana Waterthrush, and occasionally I hear the fluted song of a Wood Thrush. Gray Catbirds mew their loud, plaintive calls from large shrubs around a neighbor’s yard.

The kee-yer calls of Red-shouldered Hawks can be heard most days, and they’re often soaring. Red-tailed Hawks are more likely to be out soaring over the highway or the field – though I haven’t seen them as often lately. Both Turkey Vulture and Black Vulture often perch on top of utility poles over the field.

Chipping Sparrow, Eastern Bluebird, Chimney Swift, Eastern Phoebe, Northern Cardinal, Northern Mockingbird, Brown Thrasher, Pine Warbler, Carolina Wren, House Wren, Eastern Phoebe, Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Chickadee, American Robin, American Goldfinch, Red-bellied Woodpecker and Downy Woodpecker – all are abundant. And Brown-headed Nuthatch, Hairy Woodpecker, Pileated Woodpecker, Northern Flicker and Barred Owl are less numerous, but still around.

So really, I shouldn’t be complaining. Summer is always a rather quiet time for birds, and even though I know that, the quiet always seems to come sooner than I expect. And while it’s undoubtedly true and perhaps inevitable that significant changes have taken place here over the past decade, especially given the loss of wooded and open land in the surrounding area, there is still a great deal more to see and hear than I ever manage to find. Plenty more to learn.

I do think it’s important to note the decline or disappearance of species – but at the same time, it’s equally important to appreciate and value what is here now – the common species as well as the rare. What seems to be common today may all too likely become rare or even disappear in the not too distant future. And the greatest hope of that not happening is to appreciate and become familiar with the natural world around us, where we live. Not in some distant, special place, but here at home.

A young Blue Grosbeak male continues to sing in and around the old field. This morning under a hot, sunny blue sky, it sang from a chinaberry tree across the road, on the edge of a rough clearing, and it seemed to be singing today with a little more gusto and fluency. And this time, I was able to get a much better look when it flew from the tree, across the road and into the field, and perched on top of a weed there to sing. Its coloring is a fine, muted, parchment brown, paler on the belly, slightly darker on wings and back, and out in the open a distinct blue shows up in the head, back and tail, like a rich blue shadow. When it disappeared for a few minutes into thick grassy weeds near the ground, it gave its chink call. Then it flew from there back across the road and into one of several large old oaks.

Earlier in the morning I walked through a low, wooded section of the neighborhood where the air still felt cool, and heard the songs of Louisiana Waterthrush, Acadian Flycatcher, Red-eyed Vireo and even a Wood Thrush, all seeming to come from along the wooded creek. A Great-crested Flycatcher called breet. A Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, speee. And the wispy, insistent calls of baby birds in several different places.

One Summer Tanager sang closer to the roadside, but no Scarlet Tanager, and because I haven’t heard a Scarlet Tanager for several days now, I had just about decided they might have all moved on further north for the summer.

Then in one of the most unlikely areas – just outside our subdivision, across the road from the old field, a Scarlet Tanager was singing in the top of an oak tree. It’s not an area where I would expect to find one at all, and might not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. But there it was, bright red with black wings in the top of the tree, singing two or three phrases of its song, then putting in a chick-brrr call, then singing again. I can only guess that it might have come across the highway from the more thickly wooded land there.

This morning the sweet-sweet, chew-chew, sweet-sweet song of an Indigo Bunting pierced the air over the old field, a small sound but somehow clear and sharp enough to stand out even above the traffic noise from the highway below.

It was mid-morning, already hot and sunny, with a hazy blue sky. Small orange and yellow butterflies flew over banks of pink wild roses, rampant among the grass, vines and briars in the field, and along the roadside bloomed tall-stemmed daisies, furry rabbit’s foot clover, false dandelions, low-growing purple stiff verbena and other small wildflowers in dusty white, yellow, pale violet, blue and red. The warm, summery scent of honeysuckle and gardenias drifted out from privet thickets and dense green shrubs.

Though the Indigo Bunting sang and sang, at first glance it looked impossible to find such a little bird in such a large, complicated expanse of shrubs and weeds and trees – but I knew it was likely to be at the top of something. After only a few minutes of looking, sure enough, there it was – standing out as clearly as its song – a tiny shape of gleaming indigo-blue against a faded powder-blue sky. It was perched in the top of a water oak in the heavily wooded section of the field, on the edge of a power cut, a small drop of sheer intensity and purity of color and song, an exquisite jewel of a bird in a rough, tough setting.

In the background, White-eyed Vireo, Brown Thrasher, Northern Mockingbird, Eastern Towhee and Pine Warbler sang, Northern Cardinals peeped, and a Mourning Dove cooed. A Brown-headed Cowbird high on a wire creaked a rusty, jingling call.

One afternoon in early May, I almost stepped on what looked like a little pile of brown lumps by the driver’s side of our car, in the garage. When I leaned down and looked closer, the little brown lumps looked back up at me with bright black eyes.

Three Carolina Wren fledglings were huddled there on the concrete floor, and must have just come out of a nest. A leap of faith that had ended, for the moment, on a cold, hard gray floor – with no sign, perhaps, of the grass and leaves and sky they’d been promised. When I opened the garage door, one of the young birds flew immediately to the sunshine and bushes just outside, but these two stayed where they were for several more minutes, ignoring the calls of the parents. Meanwhile, another baby wren plunged down from a box on a shelf on the wall of the garage, and quickly out the door. The two on the floor finally flew out, too, with a little careful nudging. So at least four young Carolina Wrens successfully fledged from the nest and made it out to the wide, bright, dangerous world beyond.

For several days before this, we had heard peeping from somewhere up in a corner of the garage, so we started leaving the door cracked at the bottom, though now and then we forgot, and closed it again. We usually keep it closed for just this reason – to discourage Carolina Wrens from building a nest in a box or clay pot or inside an old lampshade. We still don’t know how a pair managed to get in and out often enough to raise a family, but somehow they did. They must have been coming in through cracks around the garage door that would barely be big enough.

In a patch of small pines and oaks on the edge of a clearing this morning, a Blue Grosbeak flitted from branch to branch, singing short pieces of its richly warbled song. It looked and sounded familiar – the large peaked head, the very large silver, conical beak and longish tail – and this is an area where Blue Grosbeaks have often nested in previous years. But something about this one was different.

Most notably, it wasn’t blue at all – certainly not the deep ink-blue of a Grosbeak with rust-orange wingbars – or even the dark gray-blue that Grosbeaks can appear to be in certain light. This one was brown. A pale brown on the belly, with darker brown on wings and head, similar to a Blue Grosbeak female – but female Grosbeaks do not sing.

I think this was probably a first-summer or sub-adult male, not yet in the full blue plumage of a mature male. There probably was some blue in the plumage that I couldn’t see because of the way it stayed mostly in the shadows of the leaves.

It seemed interesting to me that this young male was not singing the way a mature Grosbeak usually would – perched up in a treetop or top of a bush or on a wire, out in the open, singing its song repeatedly and boldly. Instead, it sang as it moved around in the trees and shrubs from place to place, staying low and screened among the needles and leaves of small trees. And the song itself was slightly different, a more casual, off and on series of fluent but less emphatic warbled phrases, fragments of the full song, and the effect was strangely more musical.

After several minutes in these trees, the Grosbeak flew across the road into low shrubs and grassy weeds along the edge of the old field, and from there began to give its hard, metallic chink call, several times. Then it flew again, into some large old oaks with privet and other shrubs around them, so I could no longer see it, but I continued to hear the chink calls.

After being away for most of the first two weeks of May, I returned home to unseasonably warm weather, even for here, with a string of sunny days and temperatures in the low 90s. Suddenly it’s summer. Among the familiar sounds that welcomed me home were the rich Breet and Whreep calls of Great-crested Flycatchers – one of the first things I heard when I stepped outside.

We often hear these calls in the trees around our yard, and occasionally these large, handsome flycatchers even visit the deck – like this one, which stayed around for several minutes yesterday afternoon, hawking insects from the air and also hunting around the umbrella and corners of the deck rails and windows.

The songs of Summer Tanager, Pine Warbler, Chipping Sparrow, Eastern Bluebird, Northern Cardinal, Brown Thrasher and Northern Mockingbird also greeted me, and the spee calls of at least a couple of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers – though they seem less common here than in past years – the rattles of Red-bellied Woodpeckers, the trumpeted call of a Pileated Woodpecker, and the swishy songs of Eastern Phoebes. Chimney Swifts twittered and swept overhead. Two Red-tailed Hawks soared and circled.

A pair of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds comes frequently to the feeder on the deck. Red-eyed Vireos sing steadily from the woods, and other birdsong this morning included a Scarlet Tanager near the top of a tall sweet gum, a Louisiana Waterthrush along the creek, a Black-and-white Warbler in trees along the roadside in a wooded area and – finally – a White-eyed Vireo in the Old Field. I had begun to think one would not return here this season. The effervescent songs of House Wrens also have arrived in the yards of several homes around the neighborhood, bubbling like musical fountains.

Four Red-shouldered Hawks circled high overhead at one time, near noon, one or two of them crying kee-yer repeatedly, and two of the four circling up higher until they became specks and then disappeared completely, melting into the blue.

The most haunting sound of the morning was the high, clear whistled pee-eeeeeeee of a Broad-winged Hawk. It came from somewhere to the north, beyond the wooded area where a pair of Broad-winged Hawks nested last summer. I’ve been watching for them and hoping they might return, but this is the first time I’ve heard one – and I only heard it call a couple of times, and did not see it, though I watched and waited for several minutes.

On April 29 in the morning, under a deep blue, very clear sunny sky, a sweet whistled series of notes came from the green leaves of one of the oaks over our deck. The song sounded so pure and lovely I had to look to make sure – it was a Yellow-rumped Warbler in bright spring plumage, singing more fluently than any I’d heard before this.

All winter long, Yellow-rumped Warblers are abundant here, as in much of eastern North America, little gray-brown birds in drab, streaked winter plumage punctuated by a yellow patch on the rump and pale yellow smudges on the sides, frequently giving dry, colorless check calls as they fly like windblown leaves from spot to spot among trees and shrubs.

Before they leave in the spring – for breeding territories in northern and western forests –Yellow-rumped Warblers begin to fill the new green foliage of hardwood trees with gently jangling music, like delicate tambourines, and their plain plumage turns to a striking pattern of steel-gray back and wings, white wing-bars, white throat, black mask, and black-streaked vest over a white belly – and a yellow spot on the crown, and of course, a yellow rump.

For the past few weeks, their songs had filled many trees, and I’d listened to them mostly as a chorus of birds singing together. This was one of the few times I had listened to just one spring-colored Yellow-rumped Warbler singing alone, and watched as it lifted its head, parted its beak and sang – and flitted from branch to branch of the white oak. It seemed to me like a farewell song, and I took the time, for a change, to fully appreciate a winter bird I too often take for granted.

The next day I left for more than ten days of travel, and when I returned yesterday, the Yellow-rumped Warblers seemed all to be gone.

I used to know Yellow-rumped Warblers as Myrtle Warblers, a much more lyrical and fitting name, before they were grouped together with Audubon’s Warbler into one species with the sadly unimaginative – though descriptive – name of yellow-rumped. The two subspecies are still recognized, however, and this one was a Myrtle Warbler, distinguished by its white throat (not yellow). Most Yellow-rumped Warblers in the eastern U.S. are Myrtle, while Audubon’s are more common in the west.

About 9:30 this morning, the air felt very warm already, and humid. Big gray and white clouds blew from the south across a mostly sunny blue sky. A Great-crested Flycatcher called Breet from the treetops across the street, a Carolina Wren, Northern Cardinal, Tufted Titmouse and Chipping Sparrow sang.

Among the green leaves near the top of a tall pecan tree, a Scarlet Tanager gleamed like a small red sliver against the sky, its color so intense, to see it felt like a shock. A clear, glassy red with slashes of ink-black wings, formed into a smooth, compact shape.

It was quietly moving around in the leaves and hawking insects, flying up to catch one, settling back in a slightly different spot, but staying in the same treetop for three or four minutes before it flew away.

Later in the afternoon, the crisp, dry CHICK-brrrr calls of a Scarlet Tanager moved through the trees outside my office windows. Usually elusive birds, despite their flamboyant colors and brassy songs, they tend to stay hidden in foliage and deeper in the woods, so it feels lucky and unusual to have them so close around.